Monthly Archives: October, 2012

Today we welcomed the long-awaited Knoxville New Sentinel’s coverage of Truth at Last, and it greatly exceeded our expectations, as features editor Susan Alexander, assistant features editor Christina Southern and freelance writer Melissa Priode combined, along with Joel Freedman, to create a spectacular local news front page layout that was entirely devoted toAmelia Earhart: The Truth at Last.

When I got the hard copy newspaper today, I was stunned to see the book cover and promo on the top of the front page, with the story and three photos taking up the entire front page of the local news section. The layout is spectacular and I couldn’t ask for more in that regard. They did a fantastic job, and we’ll probably never have better Amazon rankings that we have right now. With a circulation of 123,000 daily, the most prominent thing about today’s issue was arguably Truth at Last. Joel Freedman’s review is here, and here is Melissa Priode’s story, which briefly looks at my background and relationship to the book.

We needed this desperately, as the book has been languishing in Amazon sales ranking hell of late, but right now we’re looking very good indeed, which illustrates the power that a medium-size city newspaper has to help a struggling book when it has a mind to do so. Sincere thanks to Susan, Christina, Melissa and Joel for their invaluable assistance in this most worthy cause.

Leonore, an alert Earhart enthusiast from the UK, informed me that Tom Crouch and American Heritage magazine had once again teamed up to do their worst in misinforming readers about the so-called Earhart mystery and recent efforts to solve it.

The lengthy article, “Amelia Found?” was a virtual repeat of Crouch’s Summer 2007 puff piece in Information and TechnologyMagazine that extolled Ric Gillespie, TIGHAR and Elgen Long, while curtly dismissing Fred Goerner, Tom Devine and all who believe in the Saipan truth as “conspiracy theorists.” Here is the link to the American Heritagearticle: http://www.americanheritage.com/content/amelia-found

At the urging of my UK correspondent, I wrote the below missive to American Heritageand Tom Crouch, knowing of course that I was completely wasting my time, but keeping mind that the old axiom, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” should always be respected. Following is the letter I just wrote to American Heritage editors:

I’ve just been informed about Tom Crouch’s Summer 2012 article about Amelia Earhart in American Heritage, and read it with mounting disgust. Once again, American Heritage and Tom Crouch, senior Smithsonian Air and Space curator, have teamed up to write almost exactly the same article they put out in 2007 for the 70th anniversary of AE’s loss. The piece is an extensive discussion of TIGHAR’s vapid, worn-out theory, albeit with a passing mention of the possibility that Gillespie might be wrong, because “most researchers agree thatAE crashed and sank near Howland Island” or something similarly inane. Mr. Crouch’s piece was probably written before the late June 2012 publication of my new book, Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last, which presents the most comprehensive case ever for the presence and death of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan on Saipan, but that has little or nothing to do with Mr. Crouch or American Heritage‘s aversion to thetruth in the Earhart case.

As professional historians, it’s impossible to imagine that Mr. Crouch and the editors at American Heritage are unaware of the mountains of evidence that place Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan on Saipan. Thousands, if not millions of murderers have gone to their executions based on the tiniest fraction of the witness testimony that’s been given by many that places Earhart and Noonan on Saipan. Even if you reject this overwhelming evidence, can you honestly claim that Mr. Crouch’s piece is a fair treatment of the massive evidence gathered over many decades by researchers such as Fred Goerner, Joe Gervais, Tom Devine, Vincent V. Loomis, Oliver Knaggs, Bill Prymak and others? Of course not. Something else is afoot here, driven by the same abject motivations that have informed the government-media establishment’s policy of complete denial of the truth in the Earfhart disappearance fromthe beginning — protecting FDR’s reputation and their own longtime investments in the TIGHAR and crash-and-sank deceptions being prominent among them. Can anyone who is remotely informed doubt that the U.S. government and its media toadies, of which American Heritageis in the vanguard, are still engaged in the willful and purposeful suppression of the truth?

I dissected Mr. Crouch’s 2007 piece line by line in the final chapter of my book, and clearly exposed his assertions as pure U.S. government-issue poppycock. (Due to the media’s complete refusal to acknowledge the existence of my book, Mr. Crouch and American Heritage may also be unaware of it. In that case I have attached the section of its last chapter that addresses Mr. Crouch’s 2007 article, as well as the following section, which addresses Gillespie’s fantasies). Now, in his 2012 repeat of the same nonsense, over several pages of propaganda, ostensibly covering the gamut of ideas about AE’s fate, Mr. Crouch could manage only the following about Saipan, far less than even in 2007, when he at least mentioned Devine’s work, although inaccurately and dismissively. Note the prominent use of the tainted word “conspiracy” in his reference:

“What are we to make of all the conspiracy theories? Is there a small flame of truth flickering somewhere beneath all that smoke? Most likely not. In three-quarters of a century of looking, no researcher has produced a shred of hard evidence to suggest that Earhart and Noonan were either spies or prisoners of the Japanese.”

Not “a shred,” insists Mr. Crouch. How can he so blithely ignore the hundreds of freely given and honest accounts of witnesses in the Marshalls and Saipan, GI veterans of Saipan, and three flag officer statements to Fred Goerner that Earhart died on Saipan, and much more? Quite easily, apparently, if he — and you — have an agenda of complete denial of the truth and suppression of the facts.

American Heritage needs to be reminded that their readership is not totally populated by morons and lemmings, so I hope this brief letter will at least accomplish that modest goal. I also know that American Heritage does not possess the integrity or intellectual honesty to publish this letter, but I’ll make sure I inform as many as I can about the continuing Earhart travesty and your role in perpetuating it.

This letter has never been published, as of today’s update (Jan. 9, 2014).

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Tim Burchett, the mayor of Knox County, Tenn. (both counties and cities have mayors in Tennessee) was listening during my Sept. 4 radio appearance with Phil Williams on WOKI. He contacted me and expressed his interest in the Earhart story, and I finally met him at his office in downtown Knoxville yesterday. We talked for about 40 minutes, and I brought him two copies of Truth at Last.

His father was in the Navy in World War II, he said, and he (Tim) had always been interested in the Earhart case. He asked many intelligent questions, but mainly listened as I explained the situation — both with the so-called Earhart “mystery” and the current media blackout of Truth at Last.Such is the pathetic level of interest in the now three-month old book that this blog registered only one visitor on Oct. 1. To say the book and this blog and web site are on life support and need serious help is severe understatement.Seriously: One visitor? Can you spell“hopeless”?

Perhaps it is, but the mayor has some ideas about how he can help this book and its worthy cause, and I hope to be reporting soon on those efforts and their results.

Thanks also to Carol Anderson of the Knoxville Welcome Wagon Club, who was also listening Sept. 4 and has asked me to speak to her group’s monthy meeting of about 50 women ages 50 to 70 during the first week of November — the day after the most important election we’ve seen in our lifetimes, in fact. I didn’t realize this when I accepted her invitation, but since she had to change a previously scheduled speaker to accomodate me, I’ll have to live with the possibility that I might be forced to address this group on the morning of a national tragedy. Let’s hope and pray that will not be the case.

Postscript: Added March 12, 2013:

I never heard from Mayor Tim again, and he ignored several emails I sent. He proved to be just another politician, full of false promises.

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The Second Edition of “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last,” is a large 7″ by 10″ paperback offering 370 pages at the same low retail price of $19.95, and significantly less at Amazon.com. The book adds two chapters, a new foreword, several new subsections, the most recent discoveries, rare photos and a near-total rewrite to the mountain of overwhelming witness testimony and documentation presented in the first edition of “Truth at Last. ”

Even as a child, Amelia had the look of someone destined for greatness. In this photo, she seems to be gazing at events far away in time and space. Who can fathom it?

This is a priceless portrait of our heroine at the tender age of 7. She seems to be peering into timelessness, as if she can actually see the amazing adventures that are in store for her — and us. Who can fathom it?

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Amelia at Spadina Military Hospital, Toronto, Canada, circa 1917-’18

While visiting Muriel at St. Margaret’s College in Toronto in 1917, Amelia encountered three Canadian soldiers who had lost a leg, and decided, on the spot, to join the war effort. She enrolled in the Voluntary Aid Detachment and was assigned to the Spadina Military Hospital. “Sister Amelia soon became a favorite among the wounded and discouraged men,” Muriel wrote.

Arrival at Londonderry, Ireland, May 21, 1932

Earhart had spent the last 15 hours tossed by dangerous storms over the North Atlantic, contending with failing machinery and sipping a can of tomato juice to calm her queasy stomach. That day—May 21, 1932—she planned to end her journey at Paris’ Le Bourget airfield, where exactly five years earlier Charles Lindbergh had completed the first solo transatlantic flight. When her Vega’s reserve fuel tank sprang a leak and flames began engulfing the exhaust manifold, however, Earhart wound up navigating to a Northern Ireland pasture. From that moment , Amelia Earhart’s star shined brightest, and her like has never been seen since.

Acclaim at Londonderry

Another great photo of Amelia, as she prepares to take off from Derry, Northren Ireland, and fly on to London, where worldwide fame awaited. After a flight lasting 14 hours, 56 minutes during which she contended with strong northerly winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The landing was witnessed by Cecil King and T. Sawyer. When a farm hand asked, “Have you flown far?” Earhart replied, “From America.” The site now is the home of a small museum, the Amelia Earhart Centre.

Summer 1960: The Saipan Truth comes out

The headline story of the May 27, 1960 edition of the San Mateo Times was the first of several stories written by ace reporter Linwood Day that set the stage for Fred Goerner’s first visit to Saipan in mid-June 1960 and led Goerner’s 1966 bestseller, “The Search for Amelia Earhart.” Day worked closely by phone with Goerner, and on July 1, 1960, the Earhart frenzy reached its peak, with the Times announcing “Amelia Earhart Mystery Is Solved” in a 100-point banner headline accross its front page.

This story appeared in the San Mateo Times “Family Weekly” news magazine on July 3, 1960. The sensational account revealed details of her life as an 11-year-old on 1937 Saipan, but the true picture of what she actually saw that day remains in question. Was it a seaplane or a landplane in trouble that landed at Tanapag Harbor?

Fred Goerner with witness Manual Aldan, Saipan, 1960

Fred Goerner with witness Manuel Aldan on Saipan, June 1960. Aldan was a dentist whose practice was restricted to Japanese officers in 1937, and though he didn’t see the American fliers, he heard much about them from his patients. Aldan told Goerner that one officer identified the white woman as “Earharto!” (Courtesy San Francisco Library Special Collections.)

The only bestseller ever penned on the Earhart disappearance, “Search” sold over 400,000 copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. In September 1966, Time magazine’s scathing review, titled “Sinister Conspiracy,” set the original tone for what has become several generations of media aversion to the truth about Amelia’s death on Saipan.

This story, which announced Thomas E. Devine’s Saipan gravesite claim, appeared in the San Mateo Times on July 16, 1960. Devine returned to Saipan in 1963 and located the gravesite shown to him by the Okinawan woman in August 1945, but did not share his find with Fred Goerner. Instead Devine planned to return to Saipan by himself, but he never again got the opportunity.

Thomas E. Devine, whose involvement with events surrounding the discovery and destruction of Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10E as a 28-year-old Army postal sergeant on Saipan in July 1944 shaped the rest of his life. Devine’s 1987 classic, “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident,” is among the most important books about the Earhart disappearance ever penned.

Thomas E. Devine’s “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident” (1987) is Devine’s first-person account of his eyewitness experiences on Saipan, where he saw Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10, NR 16020 on three occasions, the final time the plane was in flames. Devine’s book is among the most important ever penned in revealing the truth about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

On November 13, 1970, the Japan Times reported, for the first time, the shocking claims of Mrs. Michiko Sugita, who was told of Amelia Earhart’s execution on Saipan in 1937. Sugita, the eleven-year-old daughter of the civilian chief of police on Saipan in 1937, told the Japan Times in 1970 that Japanese military police shot Amelia Earhart as a spy there. Sugita, the first Japanese national to report Earhart’s presence on Saipan, corresponded for a time with Thomas E. Devine, but later went missing and his letters were returned, marked, “No such person, unknown.”

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, Japanese national, Earhart witness

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, whose account as told to the Japan Times in 1970 remains the only testimony from a Japanese national that attests to Amelia Earhart’s presence and death on Saipan following her July 2, 1937 disappearance. Sugitia corresponded with Thomas E. Devine for a few years in the mid-1970s before Devine’s letters were returned with the notation, “No such person. Return to sender.”

This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz: Fred Goerner’s most respected informant

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, circa 1942, the last of the Navy’s 5-star admirals. In late March 1965, a week before his meeting with General Wallace M. Greene Jr. at Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Nimitz called Goerner in San Francisco. “Now that you’re going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese,” Goerner claimed Nimitz told him. The admiral’s revelation appeared to be a monumental breakthrough for the determined newsman, and is known even to many casual observers of the Earhart matter. “After five years of effort, the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Pacific was telling me it had not been wasted,” Goerner wrote.

Marshall Islands 50th Anniversary Commemorative Stamps, 1987

The independent Republic of the Marshalls Islands issued these four postage stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s landing at Mili Atoll and pickup by the Japanese survey ship Koshu in July 1937. To the Marshallese people, the Earhart disappearance is no mystery or rumor, but a stone cold fact.